And Also With You
by TGBMcCray
Summary: She died on Christmas. I have nothing left but money and booze. I'm out of whiskey and out of my mind on Christmas Eve. God has a funny way of answering prayers. Two strangers. One night. Half a miracle. A new beginning.
1. Chapter 1

The problem with whiskey is that when I run out I'm left not with an empty glass or a pounding head but the aching, paralyzing noise of my own mind.

Most bars close early on Christmas Eve. It's one of the busiest nights of the year for taverns but they usually still close since even peddlers of sin give up on the devil this one night a year. The liquor stores will close soon, too. If I want to make it to Brady's for another fifth to get me through Christmas Day, I have to hurry.

Emmett, the proprietor at McCarty's Irish Pub, tries to pull a Mr. Martini on me as he's closing up shop.

"You want me to call you a cab, Miss Bella?" He's messing with the blinds on the picture window up front, staring at what looks like more snow than we've had all year. It's still coming down, too. Picture perfect. How absolutely lovely for all the little children and families.

"No. I kin walkeht jas finh."

I don't remember my coat being this big and…octopus-like when I put it on this morning but I've been here all day. I might've lost weight. It's possible. I have walked the thirty or so steps to the green-tiled bathroom at least eight times. I know I have.

"Miss Bella." Whoa. Emmett's really close to me. I don't know how he made it back to the bar so fast. I try to focus on him, on his big brown eyes or the dime-shaped hole in his chin, or even on the fat band of gold on his third finger that ties him to the lovely Rosalie, but I cannot seem to really see anything for too long. Everything swims. Everything whispers. Everything goes away.

"Miss Bella?" Is he talking to me? I guess so. I don't think there's anyone else left here but me. "Let me call you a cab. It's freezing out there. You've a long walk, lass. Yah don't need to be out in thau wind. You'll catch a right cold."

"Es'okay." I wave him off, blundering toward the door. I know just how to walk it. I've walked it so often, through so many last calls. I can go there in my sleep. I need to go just two steps this way, beyond the jukebox, and then twelve to the door, or fifteen if I have to take my time and watch my feet. "I know tha' wey, Emmie. Thanks yeh, though."

He's grabbing some things up from the bar. It looks like his puffy coat and the deposit bag, and probably somewhere in the pile, his revolver. "Hang on, then. Let me call Rosie. I'll just take yeh on home meself."

Why do men always think they need to save a girl? I don't want to be saved. I am beyond it, and I have made peace with it, and I am welcoming of the fall. Come for me, Lucifer. The sooner we meet, the sooner I can stop burning through my inheritance and leave something for the children at St. Jude's who will receive the entirety of the assets I will leave behind.

He is wrestling with the register tape and calling for me to stop. I get the door open and the cold. Lord Almighty. It hits me like a wave of seawater to the eyes, stinging and burning and blinding. It sobers me up a bit, and Christ knows I can't be having that. Brady's is less than a mile. It's slick as snot out here but I've got my good boots on and I can make it. I can. It's not so much snow. I'd say only about eight inches so far and the plows are out. Their amber lights remind me of whiskey which reminds me of how Emmett's closed, and I start to walk as fast as I can on the cobbled sidewalks, gritty with sand and salt.

I get down to East Belvedere and make a split second decision to duck into the alley beside Lauman's Grocery. The concrete wall makes a chilly cushion against my face, but I lay my cheek against it, staring at the sidewalk six feet away and waiting for McCarty's heavy steps.

The plow truck goes by at just the right time, throwing a wall of snow up over the walk, covering my path into the alley. The snow is running down the gray concrete. My fingers make little swirls against it, pushing at the porous surface. It's just like a gravestone. It's a weeping marker, cold and frigid, of the dead and gone. I need to get to Brady's already but I wait. I wait.

Five minutes or twenty go by. I can't be sure. I hear him before I see him. He's got his phone out. "I don't know where she went. Let meh just jog down to the next block, lovey. If she's not round I'll come on home, I will."

He hurries past the alley. He never looks my way.

I count in my head, one to twenty, one to twenty, except damn it all, I can't remember what's after fourteen so I skip up to eighteen and begin again. Count and sing a bit of fa-la-la-la, and it's so cold, so cold. I do not want to freeze to death. I want to meet the fallen angels with warmth in my belly and a fire in my heart.

My fingers lead me along the alley wall; hand over hand, leaning ragged and bleary on Lauman's. The coast is clear. I set out again, foot over foot, into the abyss of snow and twinkling lights and every window lit with cheer.

I look up a while as I walk, but I cannot see a star at all. There was no snow in Bethlehem, was there? A camel maybe, and a few dark-skinned Jews, but nobody in America thinks of it that way. Jesus is as white as Santa Claus these days. People love lies. Priests and doctors both. They say, "She has a good chance. We caught it early," when what they mean is, pick out the casket while you've still got time. They say, "God will never give you more than you can bear," when what they mean is, God does not care about you at all. He's busy giving the next unlucky chick breast cancer. He's quite moved on from you all.

The bells are tolling at St. Mary's. They start as I cross the street to that side on the path to Brady's and the rolling quell nearly startles me off my feet. I'm so close to them it feels like they are chiming in my guts. I get right on to it, the hulking mass of urban diocese, and want to walk on but my feet won't move. It's so awfully cold. Brady is a tightwad sonofabitch. Surely he won't close early tonight. I could go in just a moment, just to feel my fingers again before I get along.

I dip my finger and cross myself because it's ingrained in me, and she wouldn't be pleased with my disrespect. I already smell like the bottom of a ripened barrel. Surely I won't burst into flame with a little holy water and a quickly bent knee.

The last pew isn't that warm because the doors are open. I make it on two more, third from the back, and that's all the further I will go. I need a little warmth and that's all. The row is empty. The kneeling bench unfolds against my clumsy fingers and I fall and do not get up.

Everything dips and swims until the altar up front and the sacraments on the walls look like a bad trip. I'm in the middle of a Kevin Smith movie and I swear if I see Buddy Christ, I'm going to barf.

My eyes close, my head against the wood of the pew in front of me. I breathe, breathe, breathe through the loose pulling in my head. For a moment, as I feel everything veering right in my brain as I fight the spinning and the nausea, it is as though I am eight again and waiting for her to take my hand and lead me up for communion. I am nerves and limbs. She is light and air.

I squeeze my eyes shut tight, tight, tight, and I pray for one moment, for real. I pray for redemption and for peace and mostly, to not be alone tonight of all nights, with a memory that cannot unsee or unknow a sorrow too deep for spoken words.

The kneeling bench sinks a little more and I open my eyes. A man is crouched beside me, his hands a temple of pointed fingers posed for prayer. "Scuse me," he says, and I smell the whiskey on him, heavy like mine and delicious.

His hair is brown with streaks of red like whiskey set aflame.

His eyes are green.


	2. Chapter 2

The place fills up pretty quickly. I keep my head down because what I drank at McCarty's isn't settling well, and because my eyes are bloodshot. No need to terrify all the families with their children decked out in their Christmas finery. The more I slump, the closer to me he scoots on the kneeler. He smells like wood. There's another smell, one I can't quite identify. The knees of his jeans are dingy gray and worn. He wears gloves with the fingers out, and there is motor oil or something around his nail beds. That explains the other smell. It's engine grease.

"Oh, excuse me. Can we get through?" It's a youngish Mexican woman, with two shiny dark-haired children and an older grandmother, probably, behind her. I look around for the first time. There aren't any other seats. My warm hovel of quiet refuge has become a celebration house for the blessed.

Time to go. Everything feels sluggish and faulty, as though I am mired in the ice that clings to the stained glass windows like ghosts. I want to go, but I can't move. She stares at me. Her smile slips just a bit. The red and white lines on her soft sweater run together and I close my eyes and breathe through my mouth, desperate, desperate for…something.

I register the warmth first, the way his arm goes around me, over my coat but still so hot on my back, and his other hand with just the fingers peeking out lands on my stomach where the coat has come unclasped. The gasp that comes out of me hangs in the air between us but he doesn't let go. A twist and a gentle heft, and I am sitting on the bench, out of the way. He kicks the kneeler up and motions the family through.

"Please," he says. "My wife isn't feeling well tonight but she wouldn't miss Midnight Mass. You know how it is."

I am positive he's been drinking but his words are sharp so it would seem that he holds his liquor better than I do.

He looks at me, really looks, and I lean back against the wooden benches to still my swirling head and give him my eyes. I don't know what he thinks he's doing, and I don't care. I just really don't do that anymore.

Care. I don't care.

The older woman leans down as they pass us. She pats him on the shoulder. "I'll say a prayer for your wife." She smiles at me, like poor thing, and I grimace. He's watching as I do. If he wants a thank you, he's not getting one.

The service starts with singing, and for Christmas Eve they bring out their best singers, the fine China of worship, who sing with voices so glorious that one cigarette might ruin them forever. I try not to soak it up. They are the pilgrims and I am the unholy land.

The liturgy goes on with all the usuals but when they are reading about the baby and the promise of life eternal because of the One born this day, I start shaking again. It's midnight here in Bethlehem and that always gets them going, because we are the chosen city, the Christmas City, and oh, my God, I need a drink.

_For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. _

I don't realize how cold I am until his hand closes over my fingers. I have clenched them in the frays of a gold and green scarf she used to wear, but I cannot focus on it for long. It's not as warm in here as I hoped it might be, and Brady's is going to close, and what? He actually is holding my hand.

"The Word of the Lord," says the woman up front in the deep red dress, and the man holding my hand squeezes and says, "Thanks be to God."

I don't do that either. Thank God.

His hair is short, fuzzy, the way men's hair looks when they are growing out a crew cut. I focus on him because he's warm, and because no one has touched me in nearly a year. No one.

They give the second reading. He has a longish nose, very strong, but not overwhelming. The green eyes aren't just a cool green. They burn. I wonder about leaving, but when I close my eyes to gather myself, the long lashes and the carefully drawn lips and most of all the burn of his eyes are still there, an impression in the clay of my mind, and I open them to see him again and I still myself, a stone among the statues. There's a scar under his left ear that runs down into the neck of his coat. It looks like a burn or maybe a knife wound. It doesn't make him ugly. It's nice somehow, because without it he would be too perfect.

There's a draft and some other family comes in, dragging twin girls in dishwater pig tails and navy pea coats. I lean toward him as they pass. Without letting go of my hand, he wraps his other arm around my shoulders and draws me against his left shoulder. Wood and oil and smoke and whiskey. He smells like McCarty's, only somehow better. This close to him, warmth seeps from his puffy black coat into mine. I just give in. My eyes close. I can hear the mass if I tune in, but mostly I feel him.

I feel his warmth, and I feel the roughness of his first finger and thumb tracing back and forth over the knuckles on my hand, and I feel the vibration of his voice as he parrots back the words I should be saying to the priest.

"And also with you.

"Glory to you, Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ."

The priest begins the homily by talking about how tonight, in Bethlehem, we should be filled most of all with hope. It is the dawn of a new day coming, a reaffirmation of our covenant with God.

"On this night, dear children, all things are possible because of the coming of Our King."

His arm tightens against me and when I look up from his shoulder, his stubble scratches my cheek.

"I should –" I say, just a whisper, and he shakes his head.

"No," he says. "Just be still."

So I am.

I am still.


	3. Chapter 3

I start to cry before the homily is over. By the time the priest begins the Nicene Prayer, the wetness is leaking silently down my face into the collar of my coat. I keep my head tucked against his shoulder. I do not make a sound. If I am very careful, it is possible he won't even notice.

I'm not sure why I am crying, except that it's after midnight on Christmas Day and I am sitting in church with a complete stranger, slowly sobering up. None of these things would be my first choice. Somewhere, there is a bottle and a warm brownstone condo. I meant to drink and sleep and sleep and drink, maybe wake up on the twenty-sixth. Or not.

The man beside me doesn't move, except for the rising and falling of his chest with his breaths, and his fingers smoothing my knuckles.

"God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God…" His voice is quiet and a bit raspy, more of a mutter than out loud words. I wonder how he came to be here tonight. Does he have a family? Is he alone too? I wonder how much of what he's saying he actually believes.

His hand squeezes mine extra hard on the last bit of the prayer, and out of curiosity, I look up. There's a burning in the depths of green, wildness, as he recites it. "We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come."

He notices me looking, and his free hand comes around to thumb away my tears at the same time that I am wiggling my other hand out to pat his hand that covers mine.

"Let us pray to the Lord." The lector up front, a balding man in a black and red checked shirt, wears high-waist black pants. "For all of our active military, serving away from home, we pray to the Lord." The crowd echoes him, a single voice from many, saying here and across the world right now, "Lord, hear our prayer."

That perhaps is the beauty of Catholicism, if there is any to be found. She used to say that when you pray as a Catholic, God hears because so many of you are praying at the same time. It's a religious strength in numbers. I think of how I used to ask for her to be remembered in these prayers when she first got sick. So many people prayed with me. I don't know if she was right. I don't know if it matters if five hundred are praying or just one. If He doesn't want to give in, will anything change His mind? Ask with faith and you shall receive, she said. I didn't ask. I begged, but for naught.

The balding man stops. "Now, please take a moment to silently speak any personal intentions you may have for the Lord."

It's only a few moments, maybe twenty or thirty seconds all told, but at the end of it, I know. While the others close their eyes, bow their heads, bounce their children on their knees, this man watches me and I watch him. Our eyes are open and we look, look, look deep into one another. By the time the man up front breaks the silence with another "Lord, hear our prayer," I know the truth.

I am alone. And he is alone. But tonight, tonight we are together.


	4. Chapter 4

**Probably two chapters left after this one. Thanks for riding along. My main story, Cullen's Roadhouse, will resume as quick as I finish this. **

**There are images on the blog for this B&E, as I see them, plus a few other extras that relate to the story. The link is on my profile if you are interested. Right then. On with it. **

I do not take communion, although I might take a little peace and mercy. I just can't walk that far. We're on the kneeler again, and he is holding both my hands while the others make their way down the center aisle.

"When did you last eat?" he says, low, into the dark curtain of my tangled hair. I think about it.

"I don't know."

"Would you like to get a bite? I can drive us somewhere or–" It might be my raised eyebrows that stop him, or maybe just the horror on my face. I don't go out. Not anymore. I go to McCarty's and Brady's, but that's it mostly.

I try to trust my words, but it's tough. "There's, um, there's nothing open." Around us, the organ music is swelling and dipping, crescendos of Christmas beauty. People are happy. It makes my stomach clench – the hunger I'd forgotten till he brought it up, and the happiness, too.

"Waffle House?" He's trying to read me. His heavy brows are up as well, pushing wrinkles into that Grecian forehead. I think he must be a little older than me. Up close there are crow's feet at the corners of those eyes.

I whisper at my hands, unable to look at him for long. "That's a long way. I mean you're not that much better off than me." I sneak a look at him because his fingers are in mine. He's distracting from any angle. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

His lips quirk. The Mexican family is coming back so he lifts us both a bit to let them pass, and as they do, he pulls me against his shoulder again. The sound of the bells in the rafters, the beauty of the voices singing, the well of the organ, the smells of his skin and clothes, the sandpaper of his chin against my cheek, it's all so much. After unknown months of nothing and gray, I am drowning in a sea of sensations. His lips are at my temple, and he says, quietness and simplicity of warmth near my brow, "I'll get us a cab."

"Let us pray." The priest is winding it up in the front, and as all the heads bow, he pulls one of his hands away from me and sends a quickly thumbed text. The Waffle House is way out there, by the Holiday Inn on I-78. The scar on his neck is thick. I can see here, with his coat falling off his shoulders a bit, how it's so thick it looks like a braid of flesh. He could be a killer. He could take me out to Saucon Park, have his way with me, and dump me in the creek.

I look up at the Stations of the Cross, and I breathe through my mouth as he briefly bows his chicken fluff head. Supposing he is a killer, he seems like he'd be a merciful one. Maybe he'd do it quick. Maybe he'd understand.

The priest is extending his hands and offering us peace, which most return. He is talking again, but the excited chatter of children and parishioners muffles his voice as it all descends into a jubilant Christmas party. My redemption or my silencer is tugging me to my feet, and leading me, one of his arms wrapped firmly around my waist, to the great double doors through which I earlier stumbled.

"The mass is ended. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord," says the Father.

We go.

* * *

"What do you want to eat?"

He's lovely looking even in the shitty lights. To my profound shock, he whisked me into a cab, rapped on the glass to ask the cabbie to turn up the heat, and held my hand in total silence all the way here. He hasn't asked me to take a walk with him into the frigid night toward Saucon, and he hasn't asked a single personal question. He's like Robin Hood or something. Arthur slaying my dragons with the sharp point of his…rough hands over mine.

I shrug. I haven't the foggiest idea what to order. I don't really eat solids, apart from canned biscuits and Pringles. Well, I eat Hormel chili sometimes, but only if the shakes are bad.

"Eggs?" He's tapping one hand on the menu. The other swaddles mine on the tabletop. To say I haven't felt a connection like this in forever would be a truth in the most literal sense, and yet, I can't bring myself to shake him off. "Hashbrowns? Toast?"

I nod at all that. Whatever.

He's chewing his lower lip and tap tapping his long fingers on the laminated menu. Our waitress is slim and black, her face a raisin, laced with age and experience. I imagine her a grandmother with a smile for the family waiting for her when this crazy overnight Christmas shift ends.

"Gravy?" She asks as he gives her our orders. I feel his eyes on me but I don't look up. These tables are vintage, or they would be vintage if they were worth a damn. As it is, they are just like me, and I mean worn, tired. Out of place in present company.

He must nod because she is gone and shouting at the wide-hipped line cook, "Two egg plates, over medium, wheat toast. Drop a hashbrown, scattered and smothered. You ready? Times two."

He pushes a mug of coffee at me and I push it back.

"Drink it," he says. "It'll warm you up."

"You got any whiskey for it?"

His thumb momentarily stops its exploration of the veins in my hand, but he recovers quickly. "No. No, I don't, and anyway the night's over. Drink your coffee."

I blink at him. "No, thank you."

"Do you do this often?"

I yawn. "Do what?"

"Try to run off anyone who tries to help you?"

I'm shaking my head. The lights and the table and the bedraggled assortment of customers do not spin or fade, but remain fixed, immobile in their utter disappointment.

Sobriety is overrated.

"No, see, I agreed to food. Not this."

He cocks his head and I think of the RCA dogs, and immediately, though I don't know why, of As Good As It Gets. What if this is as good as it gets? Sobering up in a Waffle House under bad lighting with a man who looks like an archangel in a Steelers jersey?

"Why are you alone?" he says, and now all of his hands are at it, running above my hand to the bones in my wrist, and smoothing the tender paper white flesh beneath.

"Why are you?"

We're locked up in one another again. I expect him to tap out, but he doesn't. He leans forward so he can reach up my forearm, and I cannot help but sigh. A skittish colt will calm under the right hands. I am melting in his.

"When did they die?" he says, and I flinch. One, two, three. His fingers sweep up my forearm, down the underside of my arm, smooth over the blue veins, cradle my palm, lace through my fingers, squeeze, and repeat.

"Today," I finally say. "She died a year ago today."

He nods, and I look at him, waiting, for the pity or the horror or the recoiling of the threads. All I see is green and belief.

"How about you?"

He picks up the coffee with his right hand. "They died a few years ago. Christmas Eve."

Our food arrives. As we begin, he offers me bites of gravy-soaked hashbrowns, and I take them. He offers me bacon, delivered by mistake, which I eat. He lifts eggs and toast smeared with strawberry jelly to my mouth and I just keep eating it all, and watching him. He asks me if I am from around here, and I say no.

"We came for the cancer center," I say and my admission stands there between us until the next bite of egg. "It's so cold here. I'll never get used to it."

He laughs. I want to box that sound and pull it out later when things are bad so I can hear it again. "You will." He's smearing more toast. "You just have to stop comparing it to what you knew before."

I swear he speaks in proverbs. I am drawn to his fingers on the knife, and the way he licks the jam from one digit, and the way he leans forward when he speaks as though he is sharing a secret with me not meant for our waitress or the other passers by, or even the confines of this restaurant.

"Maybe," I say, and sigh.

"I like the cold," he says. "Football. And people move along. They don't wait around, checking up on you, you know?"

I don't know. There is no one to check. He can see this. I realize as he looks at me that he knows what I am thinking as if I had spoken it aloud. He smiles. "But not everyone, huh? Some of us dilly dally."

"I guess you do."

He feeds me more hashbrowns. "Coffee now?"

Yes.

"Yeah, okay."

He has a dimple when he smiles. It's fetching. It also strains the scar a little, tightening and whitening it against his neck.

The food has disappeared. I think I ate most of it, but I don't know how. "You fattening me up for the slaughter?" I say, and he laughs again.

"No."

"So now what?"

I pass him a napkin and point to his chin. There's a bit of egg, just there.

"I'll take you home. See you on safe and warm."

The big bad wolf maybe. "Tuck me in?" Where did that come from?

His fingers press into my wrist, a little hard. He breathes in once and out very slowly. "If needed."

I don't know who is ensnared here. There's so much noise in my head but very little sound.

"Okay," I say, my fingers finding his and squeezing back. "Okay."


	5. Chapter 5

**Thank you to Sunflower Fanfiction, for rec'ing this on FB.**

The cabman waits for him as he takes me up to my door.

"Thank you," I say. "For everything, you know. You didn't have to–"

"I wanted to." His fingers are in my hair, against my neck. He's so warm. My chin drops against them, leaning into the heat.

"You could come up. I mean, for water or something. If you want."

He pays the cabbie while I punch the codes into the door. When I look back, he is coming up my walk, backlit by the golden glow of Christmas lights reflecting off snow. They are a halo around him in the darkness, an ethereal haze. I swallow because I want. I never do, but right now, I can almost taste how much I want. I want to be normal, to live, to love, to take a breath and not ache inside. I want so much.

He holds my hand on the way upstairs. Two flights. I know my place is a mess. There's nothing to be done for it. The keys echo in the stillness when I drop them on the table beside the door.

"The TV is over there." I motion toward the living room and point a finger at the remote on the back of the sofa. "You could see what's on?"

He nods. His coat is a foreign heap against the back of that couch when he takes it off. For a few seconds, I'm stuck, just sort of staring. I can't do this, whatever this is. I shouldn't have asked him up. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know.

I spin toward the milky light from the oven hood I always leave on, and for a moment I feel the drinks that had started to leave me. My feet are tangled among themselves but I make it to the kitchen. The empty bottles on the counter and in the trash look like more than I remember. Did I really drink all those? And how long did it take me to drink them? Cool stainless steel refrigerator handle, cool glasses under my fingers, and water cold like the air we just left. It wakes me. I throw back my shoulders and I resolve…to try.

In the living room, he's turned on my mother's crystal reading lamp. The TV is on with no sound. It looks like "It's A Wonderful Life" because it's black and white and George Bailey is getting serenaded by Bert the Cop and Ernie the Cab Driver on his wedding night in a downpour.

He's not watching television. He's standing in front of the mantle, studying the photographs of her and me. I put the water down on the coffee table because I cannot hold it and look at him standing next to those pictures. He runs long fingers over the front row; she and I leaving to trick-or-treat back home; she and I on my graduation day from college; she and I walking in the Making Strides race. He runs his fingers over her face. His thumb covers the pink handkerchief on her head.

"Your mother?"

"Yes."

"She was very beautiful." He turns and in the low, warm light I can see the sadness in the lines around his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Me, too."

I motion to the couch. He follows me and we drink the water, greedily, because alcohol always makes you dehydrated and I need to be drinking something so badly to get through this. His hand finds my wrist again. We watch television for a bit with the sound on low, and I notice the woodsy smell and ask him about it. He likes a good fire going at home. He gets wood from a man out in the county that lets him cut his own. He works on cars when he's off work, small time mechanic stuff. He does jobs for people that need work done faster and cheaper than a dealership. Now and again, he buys a cheap car, fixes it up, and sells it for a profit. He loves the Steelers. The Eagles, too, if the Steelers have lost. He likes to go out to the park and throw the football with his dog when the weather isn't too bad.

I always wanted a dog, but when mom got sick, it was too much. I didn't need anything else to take care of, you know? What kind of dog? I hate little yip-yappy dogs. I wanted a big one.

"I've got a greyhound," he says, and I nearly choke on my water.

"Aren't they just, you know, enormous? How does anybody just have a greyhound in an apartment?"

"He was a rescue." His fingers are on the tender skin at the bend of my elbow because I've pushed up my sleeves. It's hot sitting next to him. He's a furnace. "They get pretty much abandoned after they can't race anymore. There's a rescue place up state that rehabs them and adopts them out. He's old, but he can still go after a football."

I blink. "Jesus complex."

"Excuse me?"

"You. You have a Jesus complex. Savior of the world, right?"

His fingers still. "I like to help. I always enjoyed fixing things. I never…I don't have all the answers."

There's something in him that I recognize. It was there in his templed fingers and shiny eyes in church. I'm a madwoman, but I reach up and run my fingers over the knotted skin on his neck. Behind his ear, it spiderwebs into a patchwork of hardened scars. His eyes close.

"What is this?" I say. "Who did you lose?" He opens his eyes, but he doesn't speak as I work my fingers down into the neck of his jersey and start to feel how the scar runs down over his shoulder on that side. It's so late that his beard has come in enough to scratch my fingers as I finally, finally touch him.

I'm leaning in to reach, and he's watching me. Maybe I've stepped over a line. I don't know. I can't stop myself. I dig my fingers into his shoulder and there's so much tension there and it feels blistered under my hands, not smooth. He turns his head to me and we're nose to nose, and then he's kissing me. No pretense, no warning, nothing cute or soft. All of the gentleness of his hands on my arms is there, but his mouth is a brutal reminder of the strength and taste of a life I have not been living.

I shift to get a better angle, my hand still on his neck, guiding him as he licks my lower lip until I open like a door with a trick lock, just shake me and finger me until I let loose. His tongue is warm and relentless. Some people fall into a first kiss and some people claim them, the brass ring, the prize they knew they'd win. I am falling, and he is claiming me from the inside out.

He pulls me onto his lap, and I push him back into the cushions of the sofa. His fingers are running up and down the sides of my waist in time with his tongue on my neck and my jaw, my ear and my chin. I cannot breathe. I have to breathe so deeply. I nip his ear and he gasps and his hands clench against my waist, and I squirm and writhe against his jeans, and bite his earlobe. Harder.

"Fuck," he says, and I smile, because he said it but I was thinking it.

My shirt is knotted in his hands, and he is squeezing it and I am pulling him forward and shoving his face into my chest. He pulls at it, pops a button, licks at my collarbones, and I moan, practically keen, because this is life. This is living, only I had forgotten, but it's all coming back now. He's nuzzling the top half of my tits through my shirt and he's so warm, everything is warm. It's so damn hot in here all of a sudden.

"Take it off," I say.

He does.

My hair is a tent around us, and his hands are the poles holding me up because everything he is doing with his mouth on me feels so amazing that my bones have liquefied inside of me. Warm, wet tongue against my neck, hot fingers at my waist, firm lips trailing as he pulls down the cups of my bra with his teeth.

My fingers reach for his hair and I pull him up and plumb his mouth for his secrets. He sticks his tongue way into my mouth and I hollow out my cheeks and suck it till he's the one moaning. I reach for his belt and his shirttail and he lays back against the couch and waits while I peel his jersey off like the golden ticket on a Willy Wonka prize-winning candy.

He's hurt.

I mean not now, but he's been hurt, badly. The scar doesn't stop at his neck. It crisscrosses his bicep, which looks malformed, and it runs, a river of hurt, all down his side and across part of his chest. It's pitted and chunky in places, like badly applied spackle. It's mostly white now, but just looking at it, at the spread and the scope, I can imagine how it must have bled, how he must have…almost died?

I try but fail to stop the gasp from spilling over my lips. I reach out and touch him, and he flinches a little but relaxes as I imitate his motions from earlier, smoothing the flat of my palm over him, open and even, across all the places that once were raw.

"What–?"

"IED."

My eyes close. When I open them, his are tracking me in the dim light, and behind me, George Bailey is saying, "I don't know how you know these things but if you know where my wife is, you'll tell me… Please, Clarence, where's my wife? Tell me where my wife is."

I lean up and lay a kiss on his arm, on the misaligned part of his bicep where the muscle flexes and fades to nothingness. He's a million miles away but he's here, under my mouth and my hands. I know because I am this lost every single day.

"We had patrols. We had a few of them mapped out and were waiting…on guys to disarm them. We set up a perimeter around the ground there and then there was some contact, and we took off and these guys in my battalion, my friends, they set off one we missed when we were running…"

I keep touching him, running my hands over and over him, across the ruined skin, across the good skin, across the places they meet and meld.

"I was lucky. They got the worst of it. But I didn't know, not till after Christmas, that they didn't, you know, make it."

It's not pity that makes me stand and unzip my jeans. It's not shame that makes me avert my eyes to roll down and kick off my panties. It's want and need and connection. I stand between his open knees and I wait. He leans up and drags a finger from my hip to my knee.

"What is your name?" I say, because it seems important that I know before we do this.

He laughs a little laugh and his eyes are bright. "Edward Cullen. What's yours?"

"I'm Bella Swan."

His hand is wrapped all the way around my knee. "I want to touch you, Bella. May I touch you?"

He's asking now? His middle finger dips into the skin behind my knee.

I guess he is.

Yes.

"It's going to be really awkward if you don't."

He leans up and both his arms come around my legs quick and I fall on top of him, and he is laughing. It's wonderful, so wonderful. And then he's kissing me again, and I can't get him out of his jeans fast enough, and we both laugh but leave on our white socks because these are hardwood floors in here and it's chilly.

His cock springs out at me, and I lean up without thinking and swallow him halfway down, and he's holding my head, fingers in my hair, and muttering, "Fuck, oh my, fuck, girl. Oh…God. That's– oh, ohh." I suck hard and roll his balls in my hands, and when I look up at him, his hips buck and he almost gags me. I never liked to do this much but right now, it seems just right.

"Stop," he says. "Ooh. I mean, wait. Bella, wait."

I turn him loose with a pop and he kisses me like he's trying to lick all of himself off of my mouth, and he says, "Your mouth is all stretched out," and I smile big, and then his fingers are on me, sliding back and forth along my way-too-furry folds. When he sinks a finger in to the knuckle I groan and shiver and bite my lip to keep from screaming like a cheap porn star.

He bends me at the waist and arranges me on my back on the couch I have sat alone on for months, and he worships me with his hands, his fingers, his lips, his quiet words. When I am quivering and shaking with need, I reach for him and guide his cock to where I most want him to be. He is kissing me as we line up and our foreheads touch as he sinks in and in, deep down to parts of me long forgotten.

When he moves, I move with him, and when he groans, I moan. When I scream and shake and sink my nails into his back which is slick with sweat and scars, he lifts my hands above my head, pinning me to the cushions and drives and bucks until everything is white hot and blinding. When we come, I throw back my head, and he roars into the stillness of this room. We are alive.

We live.


	6. Chapter 6

**If you are so inclined, please listen to "Let Her Go" by Passenger. It's on my blog (link on my profile). I thought of several story ideas the first time I heard it, but AAWY was the shortest so I chose it. It's Bella's song, for her mother, for her life.**

**Thank you for reading.**

* * *

In the early hours of dawn I rise.

Parched, I stumble to the kitchen for water. He's still asleep, sprawled across my bed where he carried me afterward. His outline under the duvet is a reminder that my heart beats. There is blood, and there are cells and brain matter and spinning helixes of DNA floating around inside this body. It hasn't given up yet. I cannot either.

I shake the bottles on the counter but they are all empty. The water is better. I know this, but I feel so strange. Already naked and looking for a distraction, I climb into the shower. A lot of matted hair goes down the drain and it comes to me that I probably was not the nicest thing to be close to earlier. I want to be clean for him, something to hold near and breathe in.

The water warms me, and I stretch in it, extending my fingers up like the serpent of Ra reaching for a new day. My body is as serpentine as that snake, without curve or warmth. I wish I wasn't so thin but there's no food that isn't canned or spoiled in the house. Of course I'm thin.

My mind is both blank and full. I am Hoth, the frozen planet in here. Frozen on the outside, but beneath, my own mind teems with activity and rebellion. Will he leave in the morning? Before then? Should I ask him to go? I can feel him inside me, the rawness where no one has been in ages. It's an ache from the inside out that for once I don't want to numb. I don't know if I can ask him to leave.

The steam and heat of the shower soothes my frayed nerves. The water cools against the tiles before I'm finally forced out, wrapped in a towel. I braid my wet hair, brush my teeth, even pluck a few eyebrow hairs. I'm stalling.

My feet carry me across the cold hardwoods she loved when we came here. He looks asleep and everywhere there is moonlight from the big windows, and cold and ice in my heart. I ease onto my side of the bed, atop the covers, still wrapped in the towel, and stare at the ceiling.

He startles me when he rolls. I squeak and he laughs, a bit of warmth on a frigid upside down night. Those hands that seemed to memorize me before now tuck into my towel, heating up my skin. His lips are on my neck as he drags me under the covers. He pulls my ass to his front, my back to his chest and whispers against my still wet neck. "You came back."

My voice has left me. He wears only the suit God gave him, and Glory be, it is finely cut. I manage to nod.

"I want you," he says, his tongue lapping the shell of my ear. Though I shiver, I am no longer cold. His rough fingers reach around and mold against me, smoothing back and forth so slowly over my heat. My bottom is seeking him on its own, pushing flush against his hardened cock. He plays me, slow and easy, a piano being tuned. His lips lick and slick and bite at my neck and the dual sensations pull me taunt and unwind me in a melody of grace and beauty as old as music itself. He rubs my clit with his thumb, pumping two fingers deeply inside, and I fall, into him.

He slides into me from behind, both of us on our sides, and his hands make a cage of heat against my tits as he pumps slowly and then faster and faster until the room is spinning, spinning, probably for both of us. "So good," he says. "So, so good. Oh, Bella. Bella, you're such a good girl. Can you come, babe? Let me feel you come."

He fingers my neck, clawing a little forcefully over my mouth, and I bite at his hand and huff and groan and turn back to see his eyes in the dim light. He pushes his tongue in my mouth and his fingers scrape against my nerves where we are joined, and he pushes, thrusts, pushes, thrusts, and I am gone. I am here and I am gone, and he is emptying inside me while I clench him, and the heat will burn us both but we cannot be bothered.

"Oh, God," I say. There is light and color behind my closed eyes. "Oh, God, oh God, oh God."

He draws my towel up between us to catch the leaking and I can feel the happiness in him as he talks to me, running the pads of his fingers over my plaited hair.

"Shh," he says. "Sleep now."

He softens but does not pull out, and so we close our eyes, tangled and joined.

We sleep.

* * *

The sun still isn't out. The light coming through the blinds is milky gray, cold. It's probably snowing. One of my glasses is on the bedside table. There's still a finger of whiskey in it. It's probably a few days old but it'll do.

I reach for it, trying not to move the bed too much.

"You think you need that? Right now?" His voice is gravel and grit in the morning, and just the timbre of it from somewhere behind me wakes up parts of me that were still sleeping.

I turn to look at him and he's leaning up on the pillow, the covers about midway up his chest, his big right bicep a hard outline against the white curves of the sheets. His scars are shiny, new veins painted by pain.

"I do need it." My voice is quivering. "I, um…I get the shakes…and worse. If I don't…if I don't have it in the morning."

His hand closes over my hand, and the warmth is like a hot coal. I can feel it through my fingers and it travels up my arm, right into my chest. "You've tried before, to stop drinking, I mean?"

The fact that he wants to know does something to my brain. I can feel this idea taking root and I am so afraid to hope, to believe, that it makes looking at him physically painful.

"Sure." The sheets clenched in my hands look dirty. I need to wash them or just burn them. "Of course I've tried. It's, um, it's harder than it seems, you know? To quit. It kind of feels like the worst flu you've ever had. I always just–" I reach for the glass again. "Give in."

Warmth and pressure. He squeezes my wrist so tightly it almost hurts.

"Leave it. I'll stay with you. I'm off work a few days because of the holidays. If you want to do it, really want to, I can help get you through it, baby."

I'm trying to breathe and I'm trying to talk and I am trying, so hard, not to cry. My fingers are already fluttering under his, but he just clenches his hand around mine more tightly, doing his best to quell the tremors.

"Why? Why would you do that? I'm not–" Oh, the gasping. I keep sucking in air like I'm trying to hold back a yawn, desperately trying to keep myself together. When I was lost I prayed to be found. Now that he is trying to open the door, I miss the stretching black comfort of distance. Emptiness is familiar. Loneliness lasts. "I'm not anything."

He sits up, and his other hand is rubbing down my arm, warming me against the chills that are setting in. I haven't had a drink since I left McCarty's. I look over at the clock on the wall. It's nearly midday. It's been more than eleven hours.

"Listen to me," he says, and he reaches up to touch my cheek with the pad of his thumb. "My guys saved me. Let me help you. I want to help you."

"You're repaying a debt?" I can't stop the tears that are falling.

"You can owe me." He wipes my face with the sheets. "Let's say forever."

"You're crazy."

"So I've been told. But you're one to talk, really."

"Wow."

He laughs and nudges me with his ruined shoulder. "Come on, lady. Give me a smile. Come on." The dimple and the chicken fluff hair and the pretty eyes kind of kill me, in a good way.

I huff. "Well, this is gonna suck."

"One day at a time, kid."

I eyeball him. "How old are you anyway? Not that you're old. It's just, um, how old?"

He smiles with half his mouth, which makes me want to lie on top of him. "Old enough. What about you? You're legal, right?"

"Ha. Yes."

"Then we're good."

I want to share his enthusiasm but I'm having trouble keeping my hands in one place. The tremors are starting up my arms, and I can feel it coming on, that awful sensation of my skin twitching of its own volition. I rub my arms and stare at the ceiling.

"Hey," he says, tweaking my braid till I look at him. "Don't you ever just want to be happy?"

"I…sometimes."

"Do you think you could be again?"

Honestly bleeds, but I offer it with a bow as the only present of worth I can give. "Maybe?"

Edward's hands are working over my jumpy forearms, an angel brought back from death…for me? "Let's try," he says.

Try?

I remember Mom imitating Yoda whenever I whined at her. "Do or do not. There is no try." I'm trying to do my math. I'm trying to practice piano. I'm trying to let you go, Mom, but I love you so damned much. And from cracked lips and a sunken face she smiled and whispered to me. "Do or do not."

If I let you go to do this, I will find you there, Mom, when it's time. I promise. You'll always be with me. And I am also with you.

"You really want this?" I need to say what I mean. "You really want me?"

The belief is there in his eyes, and I wish that I could see myself from his side so I could know what it is he sees that makes all this, me, seem worthwhile. I wish I could know me through him. I wish I could know the whole world through him. Maybe one day I will, if we have enough time, if I can stay out of my own damned way.

"Yes." He wraps me up in his arms and for a few seconds he just holds me against his chest like before at St. Mary's. He speaks into my hair. "Last night…I don't do one-offs, Bella. I don't leave people behind once they're part of me. Don't run, and I promise I won't either."

I sit there, tears leaking, and when I finally nod he lets out this big breath I didn't know he was holding. "Okay," I say. "Okay, Edward."

"Hey, baby," he says, lifting my chin so I look at him, straight on.

"Yeah?"

"Merry Christmas."

_The End. _

* * *

**This story was really a one-shot, told in parts. What can I say? I'm impatient. **

**I dedicate AAWY to my beautiful aunt, who loved cardinals and Christmas, who adored shopping and the Kentucky Derby, who was a lady and a monument of strength to the very end. I miss you and I love you. I can't wait to hear your voice again one day, singing Glory to Our Father.**

**And to my husband, who lost so much the first year we were married. We count down the days until January is over, and only one of them shines. I'm thankful we have that one to brighten an otherwise rough month. I'm most glad we have each other.**

**I also dedicate it to our soldiers and veterans. Many of them make living a life scarred by war more fulfilling than most people with no disabilities to fight.**

**Special thanks are due to Sunflower Fran, Kni Nut, and the many lovely ladies on FB who rec'ed this, who always review, and who genuinely seem to enjoy the stuff that comes out of my head. You give me confidence to keep moving in the direction of my dreams. If you care to put me on author alert, I have another, rather longer, story called Cullen's Roadhouse that will resume shortly.**

**Life is about choices, friends. The lovely thing is that they are rarely permanent. If you've made the wrong ones, take your new year, your next day, the next hour, next breath, and choose to start again.**


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